Haim Steinbach was born in Israel in 1944. He moved with his family to New York in 1957 and obtained American citizenship in 1962. He studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and earned an MFA from Yale University in 1973. Steinbach had his first solo exhibition at the Artists’ Space in New York in 1979.
As he started out in the early 1970s, Steinbach translated the language of Minimalism into paintings, though some of his works were linoleum affixed to plywood rather than painting. In his work he said to be influenced by artists like Marcel Duchamp, referencing Duchamp’s ready-mades in his use of every day objects in the installations he started making in the second half of the seventies. With his work Steinbach reacts to contemporary consumer culture and the importance we attach to things. From the early nineties Steinbach’s works started to include words placed directly onto walls, as well as installations and objects.
Work of Steinbach has been exhibited by museums, such as the Haifa Museum (1999), the Ludwig Museum in Vienna (1997) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1993) as well as in various art galleries, both in Europe and the United States. Steinbach’s work was also included in the Venice Biennale of 1993, 1997 and 2001. Steinbach lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.